Her eyes glow. “We’ve hit the first lock,” she says to someone else.

The corridor lights up, bulbs bursting to life around us to show an airlock hatch looming over us. It stirs.

Bolts rock and seals part as the pressure equalises. Huge hydraulics add to the racket, whistling to match the creaking of the hinges. The door slips loose of its collar. It’s easily three metres thick—more of a plug than a door. Six bolts rest inside, each gleaming pin as wide as my arm is long. There’s a chamber on the other side, crowded with just the four of us inside.

“Helmets,” says Hail, pulling her own bucket up and over. “Quickly. We’re cutting this close.”

The rest of us follow suit. The helmet lock finds my collar, and this time it has something to dig its teeth into. It slides into the neck-ring and bites down, gears cycling as it locks itself around my throat.

Pressure test in progress, says a window in my visor. Air hisses past my ears. Pressure test complete. Sync with embedded systems?

‘Embedded’ below the surgical scars on my neck and behind my ears.

I blink and follow the little prompts as I see them.

My eyes feel it first, straining as the visor’s optics try to focus, the view blurring at first, but turning crisp as it finds a match.

With the helmet sealed tight, all I should be able to hear is my own breathing and the wheezing machinery that keeps the air pressure up. My wetware compensates for the silence, feeding in sound from receivers built into either side of the helmet. There’s a moment of vertigo, and my ears pop like I’m coming down from altitude. It plays with my balance, but I’ve got the sense to swallow and wait for my body to adjust.

It always feels like this. Like the steel has sprouted ears on my behalf.

My heartrate appears in the corner of the visor: steady, but faster than I’d like. Core temperature and blood pressure show up just beneath it, all normal enough. In the background, the suit takes stock of itself, working out the remaining O2 in its reserves.

There’s one more thing before the connection is complete; a little number appears in the middle of it all, right between my eyes.

00.00, it says.

That’s the pilot-sync, measured in percentage points. A record of how deep a paired machine can reach into my head, and how far I’m reaching out. The closer you are to zero, the more you are yourself. The closer to a hundred, the more you’re something else.

The last two digits flicker, just for a fraction of a second.

Somewhere far away, I can feel the Juno look up from where it stands.